http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A515-2003Nov4.html By John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer November 5, 2003 Robert Liscouski still has the pierced ear but not the long hair that he sported in the 1970s, when he was an undercover narcotics officer in northern New Jersey selling marijuana and cocaine to biker gangs. Now Liscouski, 49, has a higher-ranking job, but one requiring the same long hours and cool demeanor that he exhibited as a narc -- he is the Department of Homeland Security's top official protecting gas pipelines, railroads, dams and other critical facilities from terrorist attacks. The job of assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is one of the most challenging in the 170,000-employee department, as well as one of the main reasons Homeland Security was created, officials said. While many of the department's divisions are being criticized for disorganization, Liscouski's 200-person shop is widely praised for the crispness of its analysis and its efficiency. Some members of Congress who are highly critical of other Homeland Security offices praised Liscouski's performance, as did a number of industry figures. "He's very knowledgeable on issues of infrastructure protection," said Ronald Dick, a former top FBI counterterrorism official who is now director of national security and foreign affairs at Computer Sciences Corp., a federal contractor. "He's got some huge challenges addressing things never done before in this country." Some defense experts say the war on terrorism is one of the first U.S. national-security crises in which the government is forced to ask for voluntary help from wide swaths of industry. It is Liscouski's job to secure that help. U.S. intelligence says al Qaeda is interested in targeting elements of the nation's critical infrastructure -- sites as diverse as the Hoover Dam, Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the DuPont chemical complex in Delaware. The terrorist network's central goals would be to cripple the economy and strike symbols of U.S. power. >From the government's point of view, the problem is that many of those facilities -- some of whose destruction could devastate communications or transportation or commerce -- lie in private hands. So Liscouski must jawbone to persuade industry executives to blanket the facilities with security. "We need to frame our arguments to CEOs [in favor of spending money to secure corporate assets] on the basis that it is good for shareholders," besides being good for the country, Liscouski said. After leaving the Bergen County, N.J., detective squad in 1980, Liscouski joined the State Department's security office in Europe. It was the early 1980s, when German, Italian and Palestinian terrorist groups were on the loose in Europe. Liscouski protected U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Rabb in Rome, trained foreign security agents and acted as the department's representative to Interpol. In 1991, he joined a software firm, Orion Scientific, and sold data-sorting software to U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. Six years later, he set up a small company, largely with his own money, that researched news and market trends for corporate clients. Ultimately his firm went under, and he joined Coca-Cola Co.'s security division. Far from simply guarding gates, his office was in charge of protecting Coke's secure data -- including its all-important product formulas -- as it zipped across the 200 countries in which the company operates. Liscouski also helped handle all manner of crises, such as a 1999 health scare in Belgium stemming from allegations that Coke cans had been contaminated and leading to a $250 million recall. "At Coke, I learned you have to articulate a business argument for why to spend money on security," he said. "Bob's DNA is he's very focused, very dedicated, and when he's committed to something, he does it 1,000 percent," said James Hush, a Liscouski friend and Coke vice president also in security. Liscouski joined Homeland Security on March 24, only weeks after the department was formed as the combination of 22 separate agencies. It was also a few days into the Iraq war, and the imposition of the highest security alert in U.S. history. National Guard troops guarded some nuclear plants, and hundreds of other sites were locked down as never before. Despite having a staff that was only a fraction of what his budget called for, Liscouski was one of the top officials coordinating this security alert. "There was so much to do and so few people to do it," he said, recalling months of hectic 20-hour days. His key task is examining the possible threats against U.S. industry -- as gleaned from, for example, the vague intelligence picked up in interrogations of captured al Qaeda operatives -- and matching them with the possible vulnerabilities at thousands of key sites and networks across the country. Then he takes action to batten down the hatches. House Democrats, declaring in a recent report that "two years is too long to wait," criticize Liscouski's shop as too slow in finishing a listing of which parts of the infrastructure are most at risk. But agency officials say the delay is caused by his office's understaffing and the importance of the task. One question facing Liscouski is whether the government should demand through regulation that industries secure themselves, or let them do it voluntarily. "Only time will tell," he said. "We're now using the bully pulpit, but industry has to step up and take responsibility." Harvard University information policy professor Anthony Oettinger said he cannot imagine anyone better suited to crack such a challenging puzzle. "Bob's range of expertise is astonishing," said Oettinger, who chairs a CIA science advisory panel on which Liscouski served as a member. "He's got such common sense, and he's unflappable. . . . He's bedrock." - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomo@private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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